1. Install a Linux distribution (for Windows-Users I recommend Mandrake 9.2 with KDE) additionally to your Windows. (Yeah, of course you can hold 2 Operating Systems on your PC).

2. Use grip as frontend for ripping & encoding CD's

3. Per default grip uses "cdparanoia" or "cdd2wav" for ripping (i.e. creating WAV-Files).

4. For encoding use "oggenc" to create Ogg Voribs Files. Nearly every SW-Player (even under Windows) supports OGG Vorbis Format.
Advantage: better compression rate, better sound
Disadvantage: there are not yet many HW-Players, that support this format

5. Alternatively: use "lame" to create MP3-Files (Disadvantage: there are some legal restrictions, but....)